Memorial March for Missing and Murdered Women 2013

Feb 14th, 2013: Over 700 gathered at St. Laurent Metro this Valentine’s Day to make this year, Montreal’s 4th annual memorial march for missing and murdered women the largest yet.

The first women’s memorial march was held in 1991 in response to the murder of a Coast Salish woman on Powell Street in Vancouver. Her name is not spoken today out of respect for the wishes of her family. Out of this sense of hopelessness and anger came an annual march on Valentine’s Day to express compassion, community, and caring for all women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Unceded Coast Salish Territories. Twenty-two years later, the women’s memorial march continues to honour the lives of all missing and murdered women.

Video by Spencer Mann

Feb 14th 2013, Montreal. The will to fight comes from a heart overflowing with love.

Ellen Gabriel is a Native/human right activist, and former president of Quebec Native Women (QNW). She joined the members of her community of Kanehsatà:ke in March 1990 as they erected barricades to protect The Pines from the expansion of a golf course in the municipality of Oka. She was chosen by the People of the Longhouse and then by her community to be a spokesperson for them during the 1990 Oka Crisis.